A patchwork quilt of public administration models without early weberianism? Public management reforms in Colombia since the 1980s

Abstract

This article analyses the path and stages of public sector reforms in Colombia, their speed and frequency, the key actors, and drivers of reform since the 1980s. We collected the bills and laws that reformed the Colombian public sector and coded them according to a well-known typology of public management reforms. Until the 1980s, Colombia failed the implementation of Weberian-like reforms. After the 1990s, this country instead embraced a mixture of different models and practices of public sector reform that eventually created a unique Colombian patchwork quilt of public sector reforms, which is still in the making.